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Global warming debate gets local - and ugly

Indignant Brit threatens St. Paul critic with libel suit — and he doesn't stop there

By Steve Karnowski Associated Press

Posted:
07/24/2010 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
07/24/2010 04:10:53 PM CDT

A St. Paul professor touched off a bitter trans-Atlantic dispute when he posted an online slideshow rebutting a speech by a British climate change skeptic, a cyber flap that's resulted in harsh words and threats of legal action.

John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas, said Friday he decided he had a responsibility as a scientist to challenge remarks Christopher Monckton made during a speech last October at Bethel University in Arden Hills.

"He presented science that was at odds with the understanding of the vast majority of people working in the field," Abraham said. "The problem with that is that people who listened to his presentation would come away with a misconception about what is known about climate change and what a serious issue this is."

Lord Monckton, the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, said he was libeled. He fired back with letters to St. Thomas officials, including its president, the Rev. Dennis Dease, demanding that Abraham be disciplined. He also issued a 99-page rebuttal.

Last month, he gave a scathing interview to syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones in which he called Abraham a "wretched little man," dismissed St. Thomas as a "half-assed Catholic Bible college" and called Dease "this creep of a president."

He also said he had been in contact with some of the school's largest donors.

"Apparently in this Bible college, lying is part of what they regard as their Christian mission," Monckton told Jones.

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Monckton complained he had received no response from the archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt. He said Nienstedt was "probably so busy sorting out the problems with little boys that he hasn't got time to deal with this one."

In an interview Friday from London, Monckton said he's entitled to be angry. He said Abraham misrepresented the remarks he made at Bethel, then used that to elicit statements critical of Monckton from other scientists.

"It is a systematic, deliberate, serious, malicious libel," he said. "In Britain, so serious is this libel that it might even be a police matter because in Britain we have a thing called criminal libel."

In his rebuttal to Abraham, Monckton takes issue with the professor on more than 400 often-obscure points, including sea levels, sea ice, polar bear populations, carbon dioxide levels, ocean temperatures and solar activity.

Monckton, a former journalist, was a policy adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. He is now deputy leader of the anti-European-Union UK Independence Party and chief policy adviser to the Washington-based Science and Public Policy Institute, which disputes the conventional wisdom about climate change.

He said he had sent materials to a Minneapolis law firm and was waiting to hear back on his legal options. He also took another slap at St. Thomas, a Catholic university with more than 10,000 students, calling it a "wretched little Bible college." He said it would be wrong to construe his statements as anti-Catholic, given that he's Catholic himself.

Abraham said he was gratified by the support he's received from scientists around the world — and from St. Thomas.

A lawyer for the school, Phyllis Karasov, wrote to Monckton last month saying Abraham "has done nothing improper or illegal" and he "has not engaged in any academic or professional misconduct."

She wrote that there would be no investigation, retraction or apology.

And she threatened "appropriate legal action" if Monckton continued making "disparaging or defamatory comments" about the university, Dease, Abraham, the archdiocese or anyone else associated with the school.

Abraham said scientists must convey the message that there's a strong consensus within the scientific community that climate change is a real problem because much of the public has the mistaken impression there isn't.

He declined to comment on his views about the viscount, saying he found all the name-calling "completely uninteresting."

"But what it says to me is this topic has somehow become way too divisive and far too polarizing," he said. "And as long it's polarized in this way, we are incapable as a society of coming together and making the tough decisions we've got to make."